1. Field of the Invention
The present inventions relates to surface marking devices.
In detail, the invention concerns devices for high contrast marking of exposed surfaces of histology embedding cassettes.
2. Description of Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 CFR 1.97 and 37 CFR 1.98.
Embedding cassettes are healthcare consumables commonly used in analysis laboratories and hospitals.
They have the shape of a box and are envisaged to contain and hold tissue specimen for histology or cytology tests.
They are available in different sizes; the larger cassettes are used to contain larger specimens and in medical jargon they are called mega-cassettes and “supermega” cassettes.
Basically a common embedding cassette comprises a main containment unit and a cover (sometimes of the removable type).
The main unit of the embedding cassette, usually made of plastic material, comprises a rectangular base with sides that depart from its perimeter, defining the space to house the specimen.
The cover closes the specimen in the housing.
One of the sides, practically one side of the said cassette, has an oblique surface for the marking.
Each cassette in fact, must be marked with identification details of the patient from which the specimen is collected, of the hospital ward in which the patient is hospitalized on the date of the specimen collection, and any other information, so that this information can be associated to the results of the specimen analyses.
The oblique surface of the cassettes is often marked by hand using special pens or felt tips, by the operators in charge of the analysis.
This type of marking presents some drawbacks.
First of all the correctness and intelligibility of the writing vary according to the person that marks the cassettes, because they depend on individual competences and skills.
Furthermore, barcodes cannot be handwritten (traditional or bidimensional, such as Data Matrix ones).
An attempt to overcome these drawbacks is made by adopting automatic ink-jet printing devices, specially designed for marking the oblique surface of the histology embedding cassettes.
These printing devices can mark the cassettes with barcodes and perform markings of a uniform quality; there are however maintenance problems and problems related to the calibration of the printing heads.
Use in analysis laboratories has shown that markings performed with these printing devices on the oblique surface of a cassette, especially in the case of small ones, but not only, are so cramped that they often cannot even be read by optical barcode readers, etc.
Furthermore, as the size of the oblique surface represents a limit to the amount of useful information than can be printed on the cassette, known printing devices can only print a very limited amount of useful information. US 2003/0049178 A1 discloses a marking apparatus for marking cassettes made of plastic, comprising a printing head suitable for marking plastic surfaces presented before it and gripping means able to alternatively gripping and releasing an embedding cassette. The printing head can be rotated with respect to one rotation axis in such a way that it can only face the oblique surface of the cassette, not also the side-walls of the cassette adjacent to the oblique wall.